When you decide you want to try to offer a new product or service whether in a new or existing business, you try to determine if there is a market for it. Is there a need for the new product or service, or through marketing can you create a desire for it? If you are introducing a new product to compete with existing products, how is your product different from the other products and is that difference something that people will find appealing?

Candidates can work in a similar way. From his campaign rollout speech, it is clear that Mr. Huntsman is trying to position himself as the one reasonable candidate who respects his Republican rivals for the nomination and ALSO respects President Obama. On Obama, Huntsman said that while he respects him, he just has a different vision for the country. Huntsman is also a smart guy who taught himself Mandarin Chinese, was the US Ambassador to China and Governor of Utah, knows American history and can speak knowledgeably about foreign policy issues.

For all that, there is a major problem with Candidate Huntsman. He is a product whose features have no market among the Republican electorate.

Republicans have no interest in a candidate who actually knows something. They seem to find willful ignorance irrelevant or even charming in a candidate. For instance, Sarah Palin’s butchering and ignorance of history and current events is legend. Not only does she make up history as she goes along, when her error was pointed out, she insisted her version of Paul Revere’s famous ride (he rode out to warn the British not to try to take our guns) was correct even though we are in the internet age when it is easy to look up such things and find out the truth. One of the last living really intelligent ultra-conservatives, Margaret Thatcher, refused to meet with Palin when Palin traveled to the UK to see Thatcher. As much as I disagree with many or most of Ms. Thatcher’s decisions as Prime Minister, I can only opine from a distance that Thatcher didn’t want her legacy and brand of conservatism tarnished by meeting with someone who views being informed as an unnecessary inconvenience.

Michele Bachmann hasn’t been on the national stage as long as Palin, but she is working hard to catch up in ignorant quotes. Bachmann has produced gems like, “Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.” Bachmann may want to read this. If she still is unconvinced, maybe she will agree to be hooked up to a tank of the stuff to breathe for a while. I think Bachmann got her idea for this quote from Ann Coulter, who claimed that radiation is good for you. If Ann really feels that way, I don’t understand why she isn’t at Fukushima offering to clean the whole thing up with her bare hands. TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) would almost certainly offer her many times her regular speaking rate to do it. Continue reading Huntsman – Too Sane and Too Informed for a Tea Party Crazed GOP?